


Soulless

by byebyebluejay



Series: SellSoul [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Murder and Mayhem, Revenge, Shapeshifting, Soul Selling, soulless sebastian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 19:09:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7695934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byebyebluejay/pseuds/byebyebluejay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After giving up his soul to a demon, Sebastian lost himself-- or at least, most of himself. Only a deep desire to exact revenge remains, but he can't even remember why he's so fixated on the idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soulless

Sebastian examined the slick red-black mess in his hands, squeezing it so the wet pulp squelched out from between his fingers and splattered onto the concrete. The man at his feet was going through his death rattle, though it was taking longer than Sebastian might have expected. He had been thoroughly mauled: face gored, stomach a mess of entrails and blood. Sebastian couldn’t control the outbursts—even now his skin was still marked by the black stripes of the beast without any exertion of will—but he didn’t mind them either. He was a force of retribution, and the terror and pain rolling off the man he had attacked tasted like candy floss. The pain was only the prelude. The man had cursed at and beaten his child. Made her sleep on the floor. The time frame was uncertain to Sebastian, but he could read the markings on his soul without effort. It would go down smooth, and for a little while, at least, the fire in his chest where his own soul should be would burn lower. 

The soul’s connection to the man’s body was wearing thin, but unlike a demon, Sebastian couldn’t pluck it until even the weakened tie was severed completely. He wished he could, not out of any sympathetic desire to give the man a cleaner death, but because he wanted it now, without having to bash the man’s head in any more. He was ravenous. It had been three days since his last soul. Deathless days wore on him, left him feeling like a shadow of himself. Finally, the last breath bubbled out of the man’s lungs and Sebastian raised a hand, calling the soul to him. It drew free from the man’s flesh and poured into his palm like mercury. He drank it down, and leaned back against the wall of the alley as he felt his own deeper, animal essence destroying the subtleties of the human soul. That was the other thing. Demons could keep a soul safe and pristine when they wanted to. The soulless, by nature, were meat grinders.

Shuddering at the feeling of conquest, Sebastian pushed away from the wall and started into the street again. His palms and face were still gritty from drying blood and entrails, but with a little bit of effort, he could push attention away from himself. He was no one worth looking at. Invisible. Even the security cameras would only be able to detect him as a staticky blur. He walked with no real goal in mind, moving towards the sloped dome of City Hall. Now that he had eaten, he had nothing to do but kill time. 

Ghostly impressions of the souls around him flitted through his mind. There was an artist. A banker. A stay-at-home dad. Each guilty of their own sins, but none of them worthy of Sebastian’s wrath, even if he had been hungry. And then there was something else. A fleeting image of a child’s face that was at once familiar and strange, an idea of a woman that he had once known very well, a great guilt left unfelt. It was far too early for him to feel hungry again, but the flame in his chest turned into an inferno, and before he knew it, the dark bands were already burning and tugging at his skin again. He wanted to tear the person’s flesh from the bone, crush their windpipe and leave them gasping for breath and unable to scream, and then turn their soul to paste. His eyes flew across the passing people and finally latched on one man.

He was in his early sixties, silver-haired and slim but still tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a sleek grey suit. Sebastian had never seen him before, but when he looked into his soul, he knew. This was the man who had wronged his mother, who had disappeared so many years ago when he had discovered that she was pregnant with him. He had no recollection of the events of his childhood, or of anything other than the past year or two since he had surrendered his soul, but through his father’s essence he could view the parts of his life that he had touched. The poverty. The stress. The loneliness and hunger and wounded pride, but more than anything else the rage he had sparked in Sebastian by leaving his mother so vulnerable: the vengeance that he embodied now. 

The shield of disinterest that he had put up to guard himself from public scrutiny burned away like water dropped on a hot skillet, and suddenly eyes were turning towards him, including his father’s. Someone screamed. He could not feel the transformation beyond the pressure and heat of the stripes on his skin, but he had seen himself in the involuntary form before: the heavy, feline claws and head, his skin gone burnished red and black, the hungry mouth, the impish ears. Everyone was screaming and fleeing, but the mass chaos was only a side effect. Sebastian was only interested in destroying his father’s soul. His legs ate up the ground between them. 

Clawed fingers caught the man’s back and shredded down, tearing through the fine fabric and sending rivulets of blood flowing over his hands. His father was screaming too, but more enjoyable than that was the taste of visceral terror that coated Sebastian’s tongue. Human pride would demand that he tell the man who he was, but those considerations didn’t matter to a soulless. The deed just needed to be done—dirty and bloody. He took most of the man’s ear off with another rake of claws, keeping him pinned to the ground with a knee in his back. Maybe fifteen years ago his father could have put up a decent fight but he was old, and Sebastian was still close to the peak of physical form in addition to his other obvious advantages. Now the struggle was pathetic. Balling his hand into a fist until his claws bit into his palm, Sebastian punched the back of the man’s head with his full force. Cartilage crunched, and Sebastian could smell fresh gore and pain and sense the wavering of his father’s consciousness. It took five more punches, which left Sebastian’s knuckles coated with blood, for the man’s soul to finally loosen from his body. 

The silver liquid was cold and sweet and clear. Sebastian relished it as it fell into the furnace in his chest, falling back on his heels over the man’s corpse. He could hear police sirens growing closer at a rapid rate, but they didn’t seem to matter. The fire had been soothed to embers. He was sated and sleepy. The black stripes faded from his skin faster than they ever had, and Sebastian let his head loll onto his shoulder as he soaked in the satisfaction. The police didn’t matter. Secrecy didn’t matter. They would have a hard time killing him, if that was their intent. There were limited methods for dealing with the soulless. But they could render him harmless, given enough time. Maybe he would let them. It didn’t matter. For the first time that he could remember, the need to kill was gone from his mind. The pall of fear and guilt that hung over the whole city had lost its sharp appeal. Sebastian just wanted to curl up and sleep like a well-fed cat. The sirens were very loud now, but that didn’t discourage him. As he slumped towards the sidewalk, eyes closing, he thought he caught a glimpse of two shiny black shoes in his peripheral vision. But it might just have been his imagination.


End file.
